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Core Program Courses
These courses provide students with a systematic foundation in the view of the Hinayana and Mahayana. A certificate of completion is granted upon completion of the 4 session sequence.
Hinayana
- 311 Mind & Its World I
- 321 Clear Thinking I
These two courses are paired during the first session of a student’s beginning year at Nitartha and are attended by all students. An important theme for the courses is to understand how we create reality moment by moment and whether that creation is accurate with the truth of the way things are. This is a critical understanding in that the extent to which we are not attuned with the way things are is the extent to which we suffer. In addition, these foundational studies play a crucial role in one’s understanding of “higher” views, such as Madhyamaka or Mahamudra. As Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche has said, you cannot understand Mahamudra without understanding the Lorik (the study of the classifications of mind).
The two courses are extracted from selected portions of the four traditional disciplines of foundational Buddhism, as taught in all Tibetan shedras. These four are:
- Collected Topics (Düdra)
- Classifications of Mind (Lorik)
- Philosophical Systems (Truptha)
- Classifications of Reasons (Tarik)
The courses are a rich and provocative study, contemplation and meditation of aspects of these four disciplines. Topics include:
- A detailed analysis of the objective side of experience, or phenomena. This analysis is based on Collected Topics (Dudra), which presents the divisions and definitions of objects as presented in the Abhidharma tradition of Vasubandhu. Root texts and commentaries of the Tibetan tradition, including the Vajrayana tradition, often use the logical forms of expression built on material found in the Collected Topics to articulate their view. Thus, this short course directly enhances the student’s capacity to study a wide variety of textual materials.
- A detailed analysis of the subjective side of experience. This analysis of mind and how it perceives its world in valid and invalid ways is based on Classifications of Mind (Lorik), which provides the divisions and definitions of the types of mind identified in the epistemological tradition of Dignaga and Dharmakirti.
- An introduction to the Vaibhashika (Particularists) and Sautrantika (Followers of Sutra) schools that focuses on their descriptions of reality, their presentations of relative and absolute truth, and their explanations of how we perceive the external world, all of which is based on the Philosophical Systems literature.
- An introduction to the basic forms of working with definitions, classifications, equivalents and their relationships. While this study is the precursor and creates a good ground for understanding Tibetan debate and logic, formal debate will not be taught in this program.
- 312 Mind & Its World II
- 322 Clear Thinking II
Mind & Its World II is shared with the Comprehensive Program but Clear Thinking II does not include debate in the Core Program. Topics explored include:
- An introduction to the investigation of causes and conditions from Collected Topics, which applies to both mind and the objects that it perceives.
- A detailed discussion of the workings of karma, inluding a section on the twelve links of interdependent origination
- The distinction between primary minds and mental factors, with a detailed presentation of the mental factors from Classifications of Mind.
- Definitions and relationships between different topics in MW2 continue to be explored in Clear Thinking II
Mahayana
This course offers a systematic presentation of the philosophical tenets of the Chittamatra or Yogachara tradition of the Mahayana. Based on a "Philosophical Systems" text written by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche for Nitartha Institute, this course will examine in detail the Chittamatra understanding of perception, the eight consciousnesses, and the fundamental notion of "mind only."
This course offers an overview of some of the main tenets of the “Middle Way” tradition. The common and uncommon views of the Prasangika and Svatantrika sub-schools are explored, along with their particular understanding of how to articulate the ground, path and fruition of the view of emptiness.
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